7 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Website RIGHT NOW

Here are some super simple tips to make your blog or website more readable and easier to follow, decrease your bounce rate and increase your ad clicks. I have personally implemented ALL of the tips below and saw an almost instant improvement with my average time on site, page views and bounce rate stats in Google Analytics.

You will notice they all centre around one core concept; readability!

What good is your website if it is unreadable? You could have the best content in the world, but if users get a headache looking at it they are never going to bother to read all of it.

Increase your font size, make sure the font size of your main content is at least 14px. There is nothing worse than trying to read tiny print!

Use letter spacing to increase the readability of your website even more. On most of my websites I use a letter-spacing value of 1px for all of my article and main content text. This blog uses a value of 1.5px for the main content.

Increase your line height. This is in following with the last two points, don’t fall into the trap of cramming your content together, white-space is your friend. I use a line-height value of 1.5em in 99% of my website designs.

Use as much contrast between the background colour and font colour as possible. This one is pretty obvious but I have some seen some shockers out there.

Don’t use white text on a black background if you can help it. It stings the eyeballs.

Use big, bold fonts for your headings (h1, h2 and h3 tags). Learn how to use Google WebFonts for more design freedom.

Before you write your content, work out what the point of your article is and get to it quickly (this tip can apply to almost anything you write, not just website articles). Web users have very short attention spans and a real need for instant gratification. If you don’t give them what they want quickly they will leave just as quick as they came! Using lists (just like this one) is a great way to cut the BS and get straight to the point!

One thought on “7 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Website RIGHT NOW”

The quality of your content is absolutely paramount when it comes to high search engine rankings. Penguin and Panda updates from Google mean that your content now has to be of magazine quality for you to stand any chance of ranking high. I think your last point should probably be the first point – it’s all well and good changing fonts and sizes on your site but if the content is rubbish, those changes won’t have much of an effect anyway.

The Author

Ben Scholz

IT Technician, Occasional Blogger

G'day! My name is Ben and I am a self-employed IT Technician located in South Australia. I began this blog to keep track of some of the methods I use day to day fixing computers. It has since evolved into a reasonably popular website for other's to get help with their own computer problems. Check it out, you might learn something!